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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28994928">If Not Punctual</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeny407/pseuds/queeny407'>queeny407</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abuse of Authority, Emotional Baggage, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Grieving, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, New Mexico, Orphans, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Small Towns, Suicide Attempt, Time Skips</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:33:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,035</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28994928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeny407/pseuds/queeny407</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sofía Jackson, a young bartender suffering at the hands of her childhood abuser and town Sheriff, Ethan Phillips, struggles to escape the vacuum of her hometown of Lockwood. Desperate to find work in the city and get away from the man who's ruined her life, she does her best to undermine his attempts at coercing her into marriage. However, several obstacles stand in her way - bad plumbing, jealous high schoolers, and an unsettling white knight who puts her on edge. But Sofía can't confide in anyone, because someone has been watching her and Ethan since they were teenagers, and she has no clue who she can trust...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sofía Jackson/Ethan Phillips</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If Not Punctual</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Sofía wouldn’t mind if she never saw a casserole again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Why was casserole the go-to when it came to condolence food? Who decided something like that? People could bring pie, or cake, or literally anything else, but the default was a lazy mix of ingredients thrown into the oven for a little bit. It was difficult for the young girl to see how something so dull could be comforting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But perhaps she was blaming the casserole too much - it wasn’t as though it chose to be so boring. She was sure that there must have been some interesting kinds out there, but she’d never received them. Lockwood was a town that sucked individuality from its residents, until every family was a bland carbon copy of the other, including their food.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A sleepy New Mexican town with unremarkable buildings, unremarkable people, and unremarkable deaths, the most recent ones caused by a driver not paying attention to his high beams and making a perfectly fine couple careen over a cliff. Not very interesting, and according to the town’s newspaper, barely enough to warrant a column larger than a square two inches.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Paul and Véronica Jackson died aged forty and thirty-eight respectively, after leading completely unremarkable existences limited to living on the edge of town, victims of the gossip of bored housewives whose sex lives had gotten so dry that the only excitement they ever received was belittling anyone even the slightest bit different than them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The funeral was unremarkable, the gravestone was unremarkable, the meaningless eulogy by the mayor who barely knew them was unremarkable, and the seventeen year-old daughter they left behind was unremarkable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In towns as small as Lockwood, any death, no matter how small, tended to affect the residents. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everything about the deceased. As such, not showing up to the funeral - unless you were on very bad terms with the person, which everyone would of course be aware of - was social suicide.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even still, Sofía knew that if no one had shown up to her parents’ funeral, no judgment would be passed amongst the townsfolk. She accepted the numerous, identical casseroles and condolences with dead eyes and slouched shoulders, her tears too precious to shed in front of these people. These people, who she knew were speaking badly of the dead behind her back, of how her mother was an illegal runaway and her father worked a dead end job and she was born out of wedlock and </span>
  <em>
    <span>of course</span>
  </em>
  <span> such a hasty marriage between two young people would end so badly, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>of course</span>
  </em>
  <span> a daughter from such a union would have nothing to offer the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could cry into her pillow when she got back to the now-empty house, but until then, she’d grip the meaningless handshakes and hugs with enough intensity to remind everyone that her parents had been, and as soul-sucking as the town and its occupants were, her family had loved each other dearly until the end, and that she was still here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yes, she was still here, unremarkable Sofía Rosa Lindsay Jackson, who math teachers adored and English teachers groaned at the thought of, who had worked in a bar since she was fifteen, who had met the mayor’s son and was worse off for it when she was sixteen, was still here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her future shattered, and any chance of getting away from the town along with it. Three months until she could legally occupy the house her grandfather had built, and then the rest of her life stretched out in front of her, cold and lonely, arms wrapped around her that she didn’t want, until one day when she would look in the mirror and see that she had become something as dead as the poor souls six feet in the dirt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The day passed in a blur, and before she knew it, it was four in the afternoon, and the Phillips had thanked and seen off all the guests on her behalf, because that was what a kind mayor and his family did; they helped the poor young girl who was stuck in legal limbo for another three months until she could claim her inheritance and begin her new, lonesome existence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s not to say Mr and Mrs. Phillips were only doing it out of duty. Sofía was sure that they were genuinely kind people, who truly wanted to help her until she could stand on her own two feet. They had generously offered her a place to stay, guidance through the copious amounts of paperwork for the funeral and house, assurance that everything would be alright.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was a lie, and a stupid, cliché one at that. Sofía was sick of hearing that phrase, she was sick of hearing it from people who’d never hurt the way she did, who’d never stood in front of their parents with shame boiling their blood and never forced themselves to go outside every day, knowing who waited for her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>IT’S NOT GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she wanted to scream, </span>
  <em>
    <span>IT’S NEVER BEEN ALRIGHT AND IT NEVER WILL BE</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone was gone now, the mayor and his wife having left to start the car, taking the numerous casseroles with them, and only then did Sofía finally cry. She pulled her knees up to her chest in her little chair next to the new grave, making herself small, and felt several tears drip down her cheeks before shuddering sobs wracked her throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t notice the camera go off, not even when Ethan put his hand on her shoulder, distracting her from her cry to gently tell her that they should get going. Neither of them heard the </span>
  <em>
    <span>click-click</span>
  </em>
  <span> of a shutter when Sofía wrenched away from the mayor’s son, only for him to grip her arm firmly and pull her back into him, waiting patiently as she hit her fists against his broad, muscular chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gave in after several moments, collapsing against him and howling in pure grief as he held her, and the camera captured the hint, the barely-there smile on the young man’s face as he stroked her back gently, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>a tentative snippet of a WIP I've been brewing for a while. I hope to continue this! The plot is a bit of a tangle, so I apologize if updates are spaced out!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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